Saturday, November 1, 2008

Netflix "Watch Instantly" on Ubuntu

I just spent some time trying to see if I could get my beloved Netflix "Watch Instantly" to somehow run on Ubuntu. I first tried using wine, but that was a no go. You have to have Windows XP sp2 and Windows Media Player 11. I probably do not have the right version of WMP installed under wine, but an internet search implies this still will not work. I then tried using it in CrossOver, which I was able to score a free copy of last week during a giveaway they were having on their website (thanks, Kurt!). I set up my WinXP bottle, but the install of WMP11 would not complete. An internet search showed others have had this problem before...blast. I was just about to give up on the idea of being able to enjoy entire seasons of AbFab without the hassle of rebooting in Windows, when another internet search lead me to VirtualBox. Apparently, "Watch Instantly" will work (albeit not the most efficiently) with a VirtualBox XP emulation.

Getting this working might just be my Ubuntu project for tomorrow...

FYI:

CrossOver is a commercialized version of wine that seems to have slightly betterimplementation of some windows programs and games. Although I used both for the first time tonight, I noticed the difference right off. For example, once IE is running in CrossOver, I can view and use the IE toolbar as if it were running on a true Windows platform. In wine, however, I must run a terminal command each time I want toopen a new website, as the toolbar is not displayed.